‘Kati!’ My mother blinked hard. ‘Don’t say such things! What about Jakob?’
‘You could have called him back.’ I glared at her. ‘Where has it got us? We have done everything they asked and still, it’s not enough. What about Oskar? What happened to him? What happened to Imbi Mägi? To Aime?’ My parents were silent, but I noticed my mother’s eyes glimmer with sudden moisture. I snatched up Papa’s bowl, unwilling to relent, unable to hold back the flood of anger that had grown inside me since the Partorg’s men had first set foot on our property. ‘This year it’s wool. Next year it will be apples.’
I waited for them to argue, but nobody spoke.
‘Aunt Juudit will expect me tomorrow.’ Disappointment dulled my voice. ‘At least let me go and explain to the knitting circle in person.’
My father spread his hands on the table, gripping the edges with his thumbs. ‘Fine. But you will go there and tell them and come straight home. No dallying. No sitting around until dusk wagging your tongue.’
‘But—’
‘Enough!’ Papa slammed the book down on the table. ‘Kati, I’m not asking for your opinion. I’m telling you the way it is. Do you understand?’ His chair screeched as he scraped it back.
Words died in my throat and I lowered my gaze. Somebody, my grandmother perhaps, had dropped something hot on the floorboards some years before and the burn had penetrated the thick hardwood, leaving a charred, black ring to stain the varnish.
‘Kati? I am waiting for an answer.’
Although my cheeks burned, I forced myself to nod.
‘Good.’
The wooden floor creaked beneath Papa’s feet as he moved away, lurching towards the worn couch where he would sit for the next half-hour, going over the inventory of the farm in his book, before exhaustion overcame him and he retired to the bedroom. I was left facing Mama, who could not meet my eyes. Instead, she grasped the remaining cutlery and turned away, hunching her back against me in disapproval.
Cutlery splashed and sank in the tepid grey suds that filled the sink. The only other sound came from the wind that sounded against the windows, rattling them in their panes.
Knock, knock.
The sound came again.
Knock, knock, knock.
A knife slipped from my mother’s hand and clattered to the floor.
‘Stay here.’ Papa’s voice was sharp. We listened to his feet pound down the stairs, the groan of the barn doors being opened. My heart bumped painfully against my ribs.
Muffled voices echoed in the stairwell below, then silence.
Moments later came the sound of footsteps, slowly ascending the staircase that led into the living space. Mama reached out and squeezed my hand, her palm unsteady.
When at last Papa emerged at the top of the stairs, a thin sheen dampened his pale skin and his eyes were drawn. It was the same look he had worn the night we heard the Soviets arriving, when the sound of tanks and shouts echoed across to us from the main road that ran alongside the farm, when the truth of the rumours flying around Tartu had finally hit home with staggering force.
I closed my hand around Mama’s, a child again, seeking a path out of the unending nightmare that was the Soviet occupation. Would it never come?
A figure stepped out from the shadows behind Papa. The golden lamplight streamed over his features so that he seemed to glow at the edges, a figure conjured from a dream. Hope and longing collided in my chest.
Oskar.
He was back.
Apple Pattern
‘Oskar Mägi… Can it really be you?’
In the living room of our farmhouse, Mama dropped my hand and took a hesitant step forward, her gaze fixed on the visitor before us as if she expected him to disappear the moment she looked away. ‘I can’t quite believe it.’ Her voice was quiet, equal parts fear and joy. ‘I feel like I’m staring at a ghost.’
Oskar’s face remained impassive but he lifted his chin. ‘Ma ei ole kummitus,’ he said, in Estonian: not a ghost.
I heard my mother’s indrawn breath and knew that she too felt the fluttery strangeness of hearing our language spoken again. The long Uralic vowels, the rhythm like a song. Hearing it awakened an unexpected longing in me. We had spoken only Russian since the Soviets arrived, even at home; it was safer that way. It was only now I realised how much I had missed it. How bleak and empty the world seemed without the comfort of those familiar sounds.
‘It’s good to see you, Marta,’ he said, still in Estonian. The realisation that he refused to speak Russian made my skin tingle, made the memories flood back.
The light from the oil lamps glinted on his face. Half-hidden behind Mama, I was able to study him.
His face had lengthened, the angled cheekbones more pronounced, although we all looked thinner. He wore a uniform of mushroom brown in a style and texture I had not seen before. It was wool; I could tell from the way the material absorbed the light, muting it so that if he stepped away, into the shadows, he might disappear altogether. His hands were encased in gloves. Crimson yarn, woven through with a pattern of white winter berries.
Somewhere in my body, an invisible, familiar drum began to beat, its steady rhythm pulsing outwards until I could no longer hear the snuffling sheep below us, nor taste the greasy residue of my mother’s turnip broth. There was nothing else.
I put out a hand and gripped the back of the nearest chair. The oak beam was solid, but a loose chair leg wobbled beneath the weight and squeaked. The sound made Oskar turn his head.
‘Kati.’
Our gazes connected, and a wave of memory caught me up.
Burnt sugar. The mournful lowing of cows waiting to be milked. A band of golden sunlight illuminating the varnished floor. And blood.
I turned away as nausea filled my stomach.
Swallow. Breathe.
Oskar’s mouth twisted. He took a step towards me but Papa coughed and he froze.
‘The Russians say you killed your mother and sister.’ Papa’s voice was heavy.
My mother flinched and glanced away. I too, wanted to turn my head, but could not bring myself to do so in case Oskar thought I believed what the Russians said. In the awkward silence that stretched on, I heard again the voices of the soldiers in my mind when they came to see us the day of Imbi and Aime’s deaths. The harsh guttural sound of their words. Murderer. Outlaw. Criminal. I remembered their faces as they spun us their version of what had happened, telling us that Oskar must have killed his family after arguing with them about resisting the order to hand over all weapons. It was not so surprising, they’d said, considering his socialist sympathies. Some passing soldiers heard what was happening and chased after him, but it was too late; he had already run into the forest so they went back into Tartu to alert their superiors. Those socialists would kill their own grandmothers given half a chance, one soldier had told us. If anyone from town was caught helping him, they would be arrested and tried at once.
All through their speech, I had wrestled with my desire to shout that they were wrong, to defend Oskar’s innocence but Papa’s hand on my arm was firm and so I kept my own thoughts locked away. But in my heart I was grieving, not just for Imbi and Aime, but for Oskar, too. They had covered up their own crimes by pinning the murders on him. They might as well have shot him.
‘I didn’t kill them,’ Oskar said softly now. His gaze darted to Mama. ‘Please, Marta. You must believe me.’ Beneath the hard lines in his face, I caught a glimpse of the old Oskar, the one who had played Vikings and built castles with me in the rambling orchard beyond his house and walked me home each day after school. The boy who turned his face away at choir practice so the other children would not see how the music moved him. The boy who had endured the teasing of my brother and his friends without ever raising his fist in retaliation. The boy who always brought his mother the first sprays of wildflowers when they appeared in Spring and gave his sister half his roll at lunchtime to ensure she had enough to eat.